• Andrew Morton's avatar
    [PATCH] block device layer: separate backing_dev_info infrastructure · 520808bf
    Andrew Morton authored
    Sigh.  ramdisk almost works, except it loses data on umount.
    
    This is because the files which are atop the ramdisk do not contribute to
    dirty memory accounting, but they do need writeback.  So when sync() calls
    sync_inodes_sb() to do the work, sync_inodes_sb() hopelessly underestimates
    the number of pages which need writeback for a complete sync.
    
    If you run `sync' enough times, everything eventually hits "disk" and all is
    happy.
    
    The root cause here is that the ramdisk and the files which it hosts shared
    the same backing_dev_info.  This is inappropriate because the hosted files
    *do* want to writeback and really should contribute to dirty memory
    accounting. But the ramdisk inode itself wants neither.
    
    So.  The patch sets up the infrastructure which permits a blockdev to provide
    a separate backing_dev_info for the files which it hosts.  It's a bit of a
    ramdisk-special.
    520808bf
inode.c 36.3 KB